Beauty and tragedy of first century Pompeii coming to KC’s Union Station

The ground will shake for visitors to Union Station’s next big traveling exhibit, which will include a “4D eruption theater” to simulate the natural disaster that preserved the Roman city of Pompeii under volcanic ash.

The new traveling show is comprised of nearly 200 artifacts from the Naples National Archaeological Museum. It includes a half-dozen plaster casts that capture the heart-breaking last moments of people who could not escape as gas, fire and pumice rained down.

“Pompeii: The Exhibition” opens at the station on Nov. 18 and will continue through spring.

Pompeii was a Roman trading center with an estimated 11,000 people that was captured in time in 79 A.D. when the volcano Vesuvius erupted. Details of everyday life were sealed until the town was rediscovered in the 18th century.

The first section of the exhibit draws heavily on domestic simplicities in the year before the Colosseum was dedicated in Rome, from objects ranging from frescoes and mosaics to kitchenware. It also includes several artifacts never before exhibited in the United States, including a bronze gladiator helmet and a statue of Apollo.

Then visitors enter a darkened room for a sensory experience that includes video and a moving floor, meant to evoke the ground-shaking panic that Pompeiians experienced when the volcano burst.

The last gallery is the most poignant, with plaster casts from real people in desperate attempts to reach safety or cowering in their fate. The casts were made by filling the cavities their bodies left under the hardened ash.

“We wanted to bring this most historical event back to life and allow visitors to relive it vividly,” producer John Norman said in a statement announcing the exhibit. “The new exhibition allows you to explore treasures and experience life in the bustling city of Pompeii before time essentially stopped.”

Union Station officials say the Pompeii exhibit complements its science education role with an emphasis on Earth science.

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Beauty and tragedy of first century Pompeii coming to KC’s Union Station."